I asked the Guild Master if it would be alright for
me to interview him. The reason I asked was cause
The Syndicate is undoubtedly the most largest and most successful
online guild to date. The interview will give some insight on the
history of
the guild, as well as the social impact it has had on MMORPG's in
general, and the online game worlds that The Syndicate has played in.

World of Warcraft - The Syndicate Guild Master Interview - Guide

I want to welcome Dragons the Guild Leader of The
Syndicate; who has kindly agreed to give RuneGat.com an interview,
which is a first and hopefully not last interview with gaming
professionals.

1. Well Dragons, looking over the history of The Syndicate, it has been
a very long and eventful history, full of intrigue and challenges. I have always been curious, what was
the defining moment when you made the decision to start a Guild, was it something that happen to in a game
and has The Syndicate become what you dreamed it would be when the idea crossed your mind?

Answer: There is a very lengthy story that speaks to your question but
the short version is this: I played a number of games and was in a
number of guilds. They imploded or no one really cared about the other
members within them unless it served their personal goals and that just
wasn't the atmosphere I wanted to play in. So I created The Syndicate
for the express purpose of being different than every other guild I had
ever been associated with.

2. I noticed that the Guild started out with twenty people, are some of
those members still in the Guild?

Answer: Technically the guild started with one person, me, hehe. Soon
after that we recruited a great many people to the guild. We rapidly
rose to 200+ people much of that through mergers and mass recruiting.
Our early months were not a time of stellar recruiting practices and we
had a great many bad apples that made their way in. We did, however,
have a number of really great people that are still with us today. More
than 80% of our guild has been with us 1 to 10 years. A couple of dozen
have been with us 8+ years.

3. At the point that the Guild was formed, what game was the Guild in,
and how much influence did the Guild emulate within the gaming environment?

Answer: There were no major MMOs when The Syndicate formed. There was
the early alpha test of UO. There was a beta test for Meridian 59 and
The Realm that followed soon after. There was the ongoing pseudo-MMO,
Neverwinter Nights, on AoL. But for the first 18 months, there was no
major MMO world. There was a lot of posturing and posing and threatening
by many vaporware guilds on the forums about who would 'own' who in the
final. None of that really came to pass and those groups have since
imploded.

4. Where was gaming at this point from your
viewpoint, as far as the
Guild was concerned, and also from your viewpoint as a player. Meaning
did the game have a structure for Guild management, and were there
goals that players and the guild could achieve?

Answer: There really was no gaming when we formed. And when UO started
up there really was no formal guild system. We showed guild affiliation
by creating chars with -LLTS in our names. It wasn't until a few months
down the road that a guild system was added in.

5. While you were in Ultima Online, which I
understand you still have a
presence in that game as well, how did the Guild grow in
professionalism and what was the Guilds stance on playability, Anti PK
or Pro PK?

Answer: We are anti-pk but we are pro-pvp. In other words, we don't
support running around killing players that have no interest in pvping.

We do support pvp as a fun aspect to the game between those that do
wish to participate in it. We have never been a big believer in killing
some newbie miner off trying to get ore to smelt but we have always had
a segment of the guild that enjoyed pvping against those that chose to
pvp against us.

6. As the Guild grew larger in Ultima Online, how
much influence did
the Guild portray within the Ultima Online gaming community, I
understand that the Guild sort of played a protection type role for
normal players and other Anti-Pker's?

Answer: We did regularly attack pk guilds in the early days. There are
a couple of stories on our history page (The Syndicate History)
detailing those early epic battles. While those battles were fun, they
did highlight the fact that 'player justice' is a model that just doesn't
work in gaming. Death has little meaning and pvping against someone who
plays solely to pvp isnt a punishment, its a reward. So the system is
self defeating and probably was one of UOers most major flaws.

7. What is the most notable event or raid that you can remember that
was carried out against Pker's, and what made it notable?

Answer: Here is a story from our site about a battle with a pk guild
early in our guild history: The door burst open and in strode Ironman,
Squad Leader for Dragon Strike squad. In his hands he carried a black
leather bag. He approached the large table around which Dragons and the
other Squad Leaders were gathered.

“M’Lord. All twenty scouts returned successfully. None report being
spotted by the enemy. All report their missions were successful,” he
said as he handed the bag to Dragons and moved to take his spot among
the other squad leaders.

Upending the bag before him, Dragons dumped a pile of gray oval stones
on to the table. Each stone had a glowing golden rune marked on it.
Each rune depicted a location that had been embedded in it by force of
magic by one of the scouts. Syndicate wizards could use these runes to
open a gateway to the location of each rune. Through those gates entire
armies could pass. If the scouts had done their jobs correctly, as they
no doubt had, the runes would encircle the enemy base.

Dragons was very pleased. For months this gang of outlaws had plagued
the land. They would strike with such speed and skill that few could
stand against them. In truth, many could stand against them but instead
they became paralyzed with fear when the bandits attacked. Fortune
truly does favor the bold and one must meet the attacker with even
greater force and even greater commitment to die, if needed, in order to
win. It was that commitment to their cause and their willingness to die
that gave the attackers the edge.

Deep in the swamps near the town of Britain the scum had setup a base.
A dozen houses were arranged in a loose clump between pools of stagnant
water. The stench alone would keep most people away from their hideout.
The monsters in the bog added yet another layer of defense. And
lastly the killers themselves were not to be taken lightly.

The Syndicate had grown tired of these troublesome pests. Dragons had
dispatched Dragon Strike squad to scout the enemy base and to return
with runes to locations from which to stage an attacking army. The idea
was to hit the base from all sides at once and with overwhelming numbers
and to let none escape. Their houses would be looted and burned. Their
ill-gotten plunder would be carted back to Arx Draconis. And their
corpses would be left to rot in the bog they chose to call home.

“Squad Leaders, each of you will be given two runes… a primary and a
secondary rally point. You will martial your squads on Arx Draconis at
5pm this evening. Ensure all know the plan in detail but do not explain
it until just before we depart so that no word of it slips out and the
bandits go into hiding. Our agent within their ranks reports that they
too will be gathering at that hour to prepare a raid of their own.
Their homes will be unlocked as they ready themselves for the battle
ahead. They will be awake and alert but they will not be expecting an
attack on their base. The fight will be bloody but we will crush them.

Each squad is being assigned a house to secure. Several squads are
assigned to assume defensive positions between the houses to watch for
counter attack. Black Heart Ranger squad will be on perimeter patrol
and will alert us should any of their allies come to their aid.

It is critical that we strike very rapidly. Those squads assigned to
capture a house must not stop. You must push hard and breach the door
before they can lock it. Have someone check every fallen bandit for one
or more of them may carry keys. Once you are inside the house, proceed
room to room and clear the vermin out. Do not worry about bandits that
attempt to slip away. Those squads outside will finish them off.

Once the area is secure, we will open portals back to Arx Draconis and
rapidly transfer their booty to our storerooms. Upon completion, set
fire to the houses and return to the castle. Are we clear? Hit hard.
Hit fast. Focus on your task at hand. If we all do our jobs, this will
be an easy victory. LLTS!” ordered Dragons.

“LLTS! LLTS! LLTS!” echoed the combined voices of the squad leaders.
With that, the room cleared out as the officers went to prepare
themselves and their men for the night ahead. Dragons was left alone
with his thoughts and to answer some nagging questions. Should be bring
less forces? Was it really fair to the bandits to bring such
overwhelming force? His army of more than 200 combat forces and more
than 50 support personnel with a dozen or so trained dragons was going
to decimate the bandit force of perhaps 50. Mulling it over, Dragons
concluded this was war. The bandits preyed on the less fortunate. They
didn't ask for fair fights and they took every opportunity to lopside
the fights in their favor. No others were capable of matching them with
equal, much less larger, numbers. So it was up to The Syndicate to
fight back. This would be a lesson they would not soon forget.

Standing atop the battlements of Arx Draconis, Dragons watched as a
dozen blue portals opened around the courtyard below. As each opened, a
squad of Syndicate warriors slipped through. Within seconds, the
courtyard was empty save for his command element and the guards left to
defend the gates. With a nod, Dragons instructed Xander to open his
portal. He would be joining Dargus and his Dark Path mage's who were
charged with securing the center of town and holding it long enough to
clear the houses and burn them to the ground.

Stepping through the portal, Dragons found himself on a low hill
overlooking the bandit camp that was several hundred yards distant.
There was a great deal of movement as the enemy prepared for their own
night of raiding. It was clear they had no clue that all around them
were several hundred Syndicate warriors and a dozen trained dragons with
their handlers. Satisfied that the element of surprise was still
theirs, Dragons reached out with his mind touching each commanders at
the same time and speaking very simple words: “It is time.” And with
that, every squad, in unison surged towards town.

It wasn't long before a cry went out and the alarm was sounded. The
bandits were well trained and very skilled in their craft so they
mounted a hasty defense. Arrows rained down on them. Bolts of energy
and fire were hurled into the town and out at the attackers. Men on
both sides screamed and fell. Horses panicked and bolted. And then the
dragons arrived. A dozen massive, red beasts swarmed in from all sides.

Between them rode mounted knights, mage's and archers proudly wearing
Syndicate blue and gray. Cries of LLTS echoed all over.

Within seconds, those outside were dead. The battle had already moved
into the houses. Doors were smashed aside as the defenders vainly
sought to keep the attackers out. Several doors were able to be closed
and bolted from the inside. Unfortunately for those inside, a scout
soon reported that the enemy leader was slain and on his corpse was a
massive key ring with dozens of keys. Quickly they were tried on the
bolted doors, before allies could come to the bandits aid. Each door
was unlocked in turn and a squad of warriors surged inside. More blood
was spilled but mostly it was that of the cowards seeking to hide inside.

Several minutes had passed since the attack began, although it seemed
much longer to those in the thick of the battle. Striding down the
center of the village, Dragons surveyed the carnage. The town was
theirs, for now.

“Bring in our healers and resurrect our fallen comrades. Defensive
squads, take up positions around town! House Clearing Squads, I want
those store rooms completely empty immediately! Get the treasure back to
Arx Draconis! Don't leave them so much as a scrap of bread. Lets move
it! I don't want to be here any longer than we have. The stench alone
makes me long for home.” Dragons ordered.

And with that, the army rapidly moved to comply. Defensive lines of
dragon, warrior, mage's and archers formed around the perimeter.
Syndicate wizards opened fresh gates back to Arx Draconis. Warriors
turned into porters and began shoveling chests of gold, armor, spell
casting components and magical items of all shapes and sizes through the
gates. The piles of ill-gotten booty were huge. It took many times
longer to clear it out than it did to capture the town. The task was
made all the more cumbersome by the spirits of the dead floating around
bemoaning their fate and assuredly cursing our names as we reclaimed ill
gotten booty from them.

After some time, the houses were clear. Torches and oil were tossed in.
Despite the damp climate, the wood caught fire and before long the
entire village was engulfed in flames that could be seen for miles.
Reaching out with his mind once again, Dragons instructed the perimeter
defense officers one final time for this battle “Return to AD.” More
blue portals sprung up in the mists on all sides. Within seconds they
winked out and the sounds of the swamp returned. Taking one final look
at the burning village and the dead bodies, smiling at a job well done,
Dragons stepped through the final portal.

8. As Ultima Online game changed, did it effect the Guild and if so,
how did it effect it?

Answer: It didnt really affect us because we aren't a UO guild. We are
an online gaming community that plays UO, and other games, to further
our friendships.

9. At this juncture within the history of the Guild and you as a Guild
Master and player, in your eyes how was MMO's doing within the gaming industry?

Answer: MMOs have undergone a lot of changes since the early days.
Players expectations were much lower in those initial years. These days
players expect more features, less bug and more rapid content. The
changes, overall, have been for the good.

10. When Everquest came out, The Syndicate joined
that game as well.
What was the reason to run two different games, and did you think as a
Guild Master you could handle two different gaming environments at the
same time?

Answer: By early 1999, The Syndicate was hundreds of members large and
Ultima Online had been going strong for several years now. However, not
all members remained interested in playing UO. After spending several
years in the game and defeating all the content of the time, some
members were interested in a change. A new game began to be talked
about. The second “major” MMO was rapidly gaining ground in the gaming
community. It seemed that everyone was talking about it and how it was
going to be a “UO killer” game. Within The Syndicate, many of our
members who were thinking of retiring from UO were very interested in
learning more about it. That game was Everquest.

For The Syndicate, Everquest offered us many unique opportunities as
well as unique challenges that we hadn't faced before. While we were a
very organized guild, the logistics of playing two major games at once
was an unknown factor and they proved to be quite a challenge to
overcome. Some of those logistical hurdles included:

While we were a unified team of friends in UO, how would that work when
we had forums dedicated to two different games with members joining
based on knowing us in one game or the other? Some members never came
into character to character contact and never would. So how would that
affect us? An unknown factor that Dragons had to consider when deciding
on adding a second game was how the friendship aspect of The Syndicate
would develop when some members would never actually “meet” certain
other members of the guild simply by virtue of being in entirely
separate gaming worlds. The Syndicate is based on the concept that
while we are very large, we are a team of unified friends but if those
friendships decay over time, that could spell disaster for the guild.
We needed to have mechanisms in place to function as much like one guild
as we could, regardless of the games we were in. The primary mechanism
that existed was continuity of leadership. Dragons was the guildmaster
for The Syndicate regardless of what game we were in. He remained the
sole decision maker which meant that a certain level of consistency of
decisions existed across games. It also meant that the years Dragons
had spent building the respect of the guildmates in him as guildmaster
were able to be leveraged to form the basis for the expansion of the guild.

A number of things took place within the guild to help combat what could
have been a guild ending issue. Those included:

Common forums for all members to chat in about non-game related issues

Common guild updates broken out into sections by game so that everyone
was informed of all aspects of the guild

Maintaining of a common room to chat in via our IRC server.

While those were not perfect solutions they did lessen the impact of
existing in two separate worlds and gave us enough of a solid foundation
that we could adapt to the unknown challenges of the future without
imploding.

11. Has running a Guild become a passion for you and if so why are you
passionate about it?

Answer: Anything you do for 10 years, 6+ hours a day, has to be a
passion especially when you are not being paid for it (in fact it costs a
couple thousand dollars a year to run a guild of this size and caliber).
The friendships formed make it worthwhile.

12. Running and playing Everquest as a Guild, how did you as a
Guildmaster and the Guild evolve and grow?

Answer: That question is quite a lengthy one to answer. Read our
biography that will be coming out in the coming months and it details
that whole evolution of the guild.

13. Seeing that there were really only two major
games being played at
this time Ultima Online, and Everquest, what kinds of mistakes did
MMO's do, and what do you think they did to correct them, or was it to
early in the history of MMO's for any really major mistakes to be made?

Answer: Everquest introduced raiding to online gaming which is a huge
benefit to gamer's today. But they did so in a way that led to many
mistakes that ultimately caused a mass exodus from the game. Those
included:

A. Everything Was Contested – All of the early raid zones were open to
all players. That meant that there was exactly 1 boss of a given name
in the entire game world and every single guild wanted that boss. That
often meant multiple guilds would arrive to kill something at the same
time and the race would be on. This led to guilds intentionally wiping
the other guild out. A great deal of anti-social behavior developed
where lots of dirty tricks were tried, by some groups, to mess up the
attempts on the boss of other groups.

B. Spawn Times Were Lengthy – Many of the bosses in the game spawned
once per week. So that meant that only one time per week, often within
only a small variation of time, would that boss be up on the server. If
you weren't fortunate enough to be online, with a ready to go raid
force, when the boss spawned then you didn't see him that week. Given
the small variation in spawn times from week to week that meant that
some bosses would rarely be seem by many guilds.

C. Gear Was Important But Rare – The developers created a large
dependency on having enough gear. The ‘tank’ needed to have more than X
hitpoints and Y armor in order to live. The healers needed enough mana
to keep them alive. The raid needed to be able to do enough damage to
kill the target before they died or the healers were out of mana. It
was a numbers game. That too is fine in and of itself. But when taken
with #1 and #2 it became an issue. That issue became even larger when
you took into account the fact that in the early stages of raiding,
there were only a few bosses and each one only dropped 2 to 3 total
items. A raiding guild might have 80 to 100 members that wanted to
raid. Each of them had 15 to 20 spots that needed an armor upgrade. So
combined each raiding guild needed 1200 to 2000 items to upgrade the
spots on each of their raiders. There were often 5 to 10 raiding guilds
on a server. So 6000 to 20,000 items were needed to fully upgrade all
of the active raiders. But if there were 10 bosses with 3 items each,
then there were only 30 major items being dropped per week in those
early days.

D. Linearity – Being linear isn't an issue in and of itself. It is
natural to have one place to raid that gives you the experience and
items needed to take on the content in the next place. However, being
linear, along with all of the other issues, greatly complicated things.
Guilds needed the gear from the first set of bosses to have
sufficient power to kill the bosses in the next expansion and so forth.

14. Has The Syndicate been asked to beta test any future MMO's at this
point, and if so can you give us a example of some of the titles of the games?

Answer: hehe The Syndicate has beta tested pretty much every MMO (and
many single player games) that has come out in the past 10 years, most
of them via invitations to the guild to join them, en masse, and offer
our expertise. We are very good at locating bugs and suggesting
balancing tweaks and features to make the game better.

15. At the point you were leaving Everquest, and moving into World of
Warcraft, what were your thoughts on the future of the Guild?

Answer: As 2004 dawned, our time in Everquest (EQ) was rapidly drawing
to a close. We didn't fully realize how soon that was going to occur
nor did we quite know how to handle the logistics of retiring a game. Up
until that point in our guild career, we had never retired a game before.

In the early months of 2004, as a guild we were discussing World of
Warcraft (WoW). We were being given a large number of beta spots so we
knew many raiders from EQ were going to participate in that. We were
not the only group realizing WoW was coming and that it would probably
be a major blow to EQ. The Everquest forums were buzzing with guilds
discussing their plans for when WoW launched. Most of the groups who
were sharing their plans were indicating they planned to leave Everquest
for World of Warcraft.

Internally, The Syndicate was discussing our future. Dragons set a
policy that we would exist in not more than two major games at a time.
This was done because it allowed the guild to remain a manageable size,
yet still have a very strong presence in both games yet not be so large
than most members didn't know, or know of, most other members. With WoW
coming up and a huge number of members playing that game (most of them
leaving EQ to do so) a decision had to be made if UO (Ultima Online) or
EQ was to be closed. Most UO members planned to continue to play UO or
to play both. Most EQ members planned to migrate completely to the new
game.

In early April of 2004, The Syndicate asked itself the question that if
WoW was due to start up in a few months, and if the beta was starting
for us in just a couple of weeks with dozens of our members involved in
it, was there really a point in hammering on raid content in Everquest
anymore? The “end” of EQ for us was, at most, 5 or 6 months off so was
there really a point to racing for mobs and grinding out massive amounts
of gear upgrades? Surprisingly a very large number of members said “no”
and as such we formally retired from EQ in April. This allowed members
to have the summer free to spend with families without feeling the
pressure to raid every weekend. This allowed us to recharge our
batteries before WoW began. And it also allowed us to heal the wounds
that opened up by retiring from a game we had played for 4 years.

When The Syndicate took the decision to retire from Everquest, the vast
majority of the guild supported the decision. However, some members did
not. Eight members quit the guild in anger over the decision. While
that is an insignificant number when taken in comparison to the 550
members in the guild, we consider every member a friend so we were sad
to see them go. We also had about twenty members continue to play
Everquest on their own. Most of them retired from the game within the
next few months but a few kept playing it for a year to eighteen months
more.

Retiring from a major game that had been a part of our guild culture for
several years wasn't easy even for those of the vast majority of the
guild that supported the decision. The feelings were bitter sweet. On
the one hand, almost no one liked the way raiding was implemented in EQ.
You raced other groups for the monsters, which only dropped a couple
pieces of loot yet the vast majority of the raid force needed 15+
upgrades to be prepared for the next tier of raiding. In short, it was
a heavily item based game that allowed ‘cawck’ blocking by aholes and
that had a shortage of items to gear everyone up. On the flip-side, we
had years invested in the game. We were comfortable there and it is
never easy to step outside ones comfort zone. In hindsight it was the
correct decision to make. The Syndicate benefited from making the
decision and the timing of the decision. We were able to recharge our
batteries and hit the ground running in WoW while avoiding the mistakes
of the past.

16. Has the Guild reached the point where you dreamed it would be when
you first conceived the idea of running a Guild?

Answer: I don't think I could have predicted where we would be today, 10
years ago. The industry and the guild have grown beyond where most of
us thought they could be a decade ago. I am very pleased with our
success and with the industry as a whole.

17. How is The Syndicate doing in World of Warcraft, and have you
reached any goals that are noteworthy?

Answer: We are doing extremely well. We learned from the lessons of
Everquest and when we migrated to WoW we 'played our own game' so to
speak, at our own pace with our own goals. We only recruit people with
similar personalities, goals and play styles so we don't have guild
drama. We defeat content at our own pace and we have a really good time
doing it.

18. I hear that The Syndicate was chosen to help
beta test World of
Warcraft, during that beta test, what things happen, that the Guild did
to influence World of Warcraft today that other Guilds, or players
enjoying today when they play the game?

Answer: Not too long after our retirement from Everquest, the World of
Warcraft beta began. The Syndicate had been watching WoW for quite some
time. We had been in regular contact with the development team and the
community team expressing our interest in the game and our desire to
help with the beta. We felt that at this point in our guild career,
with 8 years of gaming experience behind us, that we could offer a lot
of value to the test. We were very pleased when the Blizzard team felt
similarly and offered us a large block of beta accounts, followed later
by a second large block.

We liked a great many of the features that Blizzard offered players in
WOW. The one big complaint that we had, which we felt we could live
with for a time at least, was the snails pace at which Blizzard seems to
do anything. We felt that WoW would be a game we would play for the
long term if they could churn out content faster than we could defeat
it. However, Blizzard seemed to move at a very slow pace to turn
anything out due, in part, to their attention to detail and desire to
release without bugs. Those are admirable qualities but we were
concerned they wouldn't be able to keep up.

One of the other very cool things that we found in game was a faction of
NPCs called “The Syndicate.” The faction is colored in a blue and grey
very similar to our guild colors. The first battleground had you
retrieve the factions lost “all seeing eye” just like the core image in
our logo. We, of course, suspected it was modeled after us so we asked.
The answer we received was what we were hoping to hear: “As far as
The Syndicate monsters in game goes, I can neither confirm nor deny any
guild influence in the matter. *wink* Let's just say we all thought the
name sounded pretty cool.” Needless to say we were very pleased that
they would honor us with a faction in game modeled on us.

19. You do a lot of backend work, meaning you
contact a lot of the
Gaming Professionals, and you have Guild Members research new games,
and I hear you even have a active beta testing section within the Guild
Structure, and you even trademarked the Guild name, what drives you to
do all these different things for the Guild, it must be very time
consuming?

Answer: The Syndicate began the process of Trademarking our guild name
in the summer of 2004. The process was estimated to take about six
months per the US Patent and Trademark (USPTO) site. A full eighteen
months later, the process was completed and The Syndicate became the
first MMO guild to trademark its name. We actually obtained two
trademarks to protect our guild name, our logo and our slogan.

When word spread that we had Trademarked our guild name, many gamer's and
developers were extremely supportive. A few developers were shocked and
angered feeling that we were, in essence, playing in their backyard
without their permission. One site so far as to accuse us of
discouraging creative enterprise and possibly causing the downfall of
online gaming.

We firmly believe that trademarks don't discourage creative enterprise.
Rather, we believe that they nurture it by allowing the people engaged
in those enterprises to protect their reputation and their investment.
The Syndicate trademarked our name and logo to insure that our efforts
at developing The Syndicate would be protected in the online gaming
world. We did recognize that at the time the news became public it was a
relatively new topic for the online gaming community, but it was done to
address an issue common in the gaming world where aliases and identities
are so easily assumed and discarded. Over the proceeding few years we
had dealt with individuals and guilds not only using our name but also
outright claiming to be us. This had happened a lot over the preceding
ten years not only for us but for other groups as well.

20. I can only assume that since the Guild has been around 11 years, and
you aren't thinking about giving up the Guild, so where do you see the Guild in the next 5 years?

Answer: That is hard to say because 5 years ago the industry didn't look
like it did today, We have several big internal efforts underway that
will be more 'firsts' for the industry. We will continue to expand our
relationships with developers and continue to do what we can to make the
genre great for all players.

21. How has The Syndicate changed you as a person and Guild Master, and
how do you think it has changed members lives and how has it influenced or changed the MMO gaming industry?

Answer: You cant help but pick up a trick or two when you manage 550+
people across more than a decade. I'm sure I have learned a thing or two
along the way :) I'm sure The Syndicate has had an influence on the MMO
community. Members of ours are developers working for a number of major
companies so that in and of itself has an impact. We have logged
thousands of hours of beta time and that too has had some impact. We
like to think that we have had a very positive impact on the gaming world.

22. Can you give us one memorable event that The Syndicate has changed a
guild members life in Real Life?

Answer: We have had two members that met, fell in love, and got married
due to their being members of our guild. That is one small example of
something great that wouldn't have come to pass if the guild never existed.